


Looking for a Manger

by andiheardthemplaying



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abstract, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 02:12:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1922847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andiheardthemplaying/pseuds/andiheardthemplaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before, the sky was blue. Then it was grey, and the only colour was the red hair and blue eyes that the girl saw in an alley one day. When colour came back, the red hair and blue eyes stayed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bird on a Wire

The sky is the clear blue of a cold, cloudless winter day. The kind of sky that looks as though one could jump and sink into it. It stretches away into the distance, the only interruption the horizon.

 

_The sky is small here. It’s far away, and closed in. It is the lid of a box over the enclosed space of a forested valley. It closes in, crushing cold air down onto the unsuspecting populace of the sea level terrain._

 

I remember skies of this same colour, but so large and close and beautiful, one could jump and fly away on them. I remember skies that seemed to coax a person closer, beckon them near, to whisper to them to find the edge. And the sky laughs, because no one can meet the challenge. And the people laugh, because they never want to.


	2. Everybody Knows

_The cat was small, but not in the way a kitten is small. It was small enough that I could count its ribs as it stared me down, an equally bony mouse hanging from its mouth. Small enough that it could slip through the cracks of buildings to run from predators._

_It was gray. Gray like the gray sky, gray stone, gray street – gray like the world had become. I had seen many cats and dogs and mice like this – struggling, like I was; lost, like I was; hungry, like I was. But this one was different. Its eyes were blue – like the sky in the foggy memory of a distant childhood._

 

The man and the cat stared each other down. I watched from my crevice, pressing back against the stone, away from the only life I had seen in months, save the few small animals I killed to stay alive.

They seemed wary of each other, scared, both unwilling to look away, both wishing the other would. They were trapped in their standoff, unmoving; until a noise came from behind me – a can blowing across the road in the weak wind. Both looked my way, wary, as everyone became by necessity when the world went gray.

And I gasped, and clapped a hand to my mouth immediately, trying to shrink even more as their eyes searched the alley.

I had lived my whole life in gray scale. I knew colours only from the paintings hanging silent on the museum walls that once made up my home. I believed the paintings to be fiction – no human I had ever seen had hair so bright or eyes so sparkly. My father was gray. My mother was gray. I was gray.

But the cat’s eyes were blue, and the man’s hair was red.

 

_Deep in the shadows was a girl. The first noise came from behind her, but the gasp was hers. As I watched, she seemed to shrink, to curl in on herself and become part of the wall. But her hair moved too much to be stone, and her skin was too soft to be mortar._

_I crept toward her and reached out. She backed away. I reached further. She tumbled from her shadows into the gray sunlight, and folded her arms around herself._

_She was pretty. Once upon a time she would have had glossy black hair and fair skin. Her eyes would have been bright, and she would have turned heads wherever she went. As it was, she still would have were it not for her torn old clothes and tangled hair._

_The cat crept around my legs. It mewled softly, and she glanced at it. I asked her name. She flinched, as though my voice were too loud. Then she rasped her answer and I understood. She had not spoken to anyone in some time. She had not heard anyone in that time, either._


	3. Nothing on My Tongue

The old record player is scratching out Leonard Cohen, the songs hanging heavy in the quiet, sunlit room. The walls are painted a bright yellow that catches the light and glows with soft brightness. The ceiling fan spins lazily, stirring the air in a slow current.

 

_The bed is covered in a white comforter that wraps around the tangled sleepers. The white pillow is interrupted by a spray of inky black hair spilling from beneath the sheets. The comforter moves as one of the figures shifts, murmuring and inching closer to the other._

 

The sun shines golden in the other windows when the two wake up. The record player is still sounding Leonard Cohen through the room, and the ceiling fan still prompts its current. The yellow walls still catch the light and reflect it gently around the room. The man sits up, shakes his head of deep red hair and stretches, before smiling down at the cat by his side, and the silky black waterfall that is tumbling slowly back into place as its owner pulls herself from sleep.


End file.
